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From a pulled muscle to a hyperextended joint, workout injuries range from slight to severe. So when should you consider modifying your routine, when should you skip altogether, and how do you know when it’s safe to get back with your personal trainer? Read on to find out. Read >>

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In the Gym, Post-Injury

When to sit out and how to ease back into your routine without risking further harm.

Whether you’ve just started working out again after years of needing to or have been a gym rat since high school, a bad enough injury can knock you out of your routine for days or even weeks. From a pulled muscle to a hyperextended joint, workout injuries range from slight to severe. However, to avoid further complications, they should all be taken seriously.

So when should you consider modifying your routine, when should you skip altogether, and how do you know when it’s safe to get back with your personal trainer? Read on to find out.

For the most part, if you’re willing to work hard enough, you can recover from most injuries. Having that mentality really helps you keep moving forward. - Mike Schultz

Modify Your Routine

Sometimes in life, you hit a brick wall. Maybe you’ve submitted a report for review, without any clue when upper management will get back with you. Or maybe you set up a marketing campaign and now all you can do is wait and watch to see if it is successful. When this happens, you don’t sit around doing nothing. You get to work on other projects, set up meetings, and keep moving forward.

Some physical injuries affect you in the same way. In the event you pull a muscle in your chest or tweak your knee, that doesn’t mean you have to skip working out altogether. It just means you’ll need to modify your routine to avoid causing additional harm and pain to the affected body part. And thanks to having a personal trainer on your side, you don’t have to figure out how to do this on your own. If you suffer an injury of some sort, work with your trainer to stay active in a way that helps you maintain past gains without increasing the risk for future pains.

Skip the Gym

While you can work around some injuries, this isn’t true for all of them. Injuries that affect certain body parts, such as the back, may cause such systematic pain that causes distress with any type of exercise. Don’t work through this pain. Because it may result in pain that never goes away. Instead, get to the doctor.

It’s also a good idea to skip from the gym to your physician if you’ve suffered a concussion. Though you may believe all is well, getting checked out before returning to the weight room provides extra protection. Also, if that shoulder problem that started during high school flares up again, a visit to your physician is in order. And any time an injury results in immediate, sharp pain, put down what you’re doing and give your body rest. These acute pains are surefire signs that your body doesn’t like something you’ve done.

Get Back to Work

As your body begins to feel better following injury, you’ll want to get back in the gym. If you’ve worked out long enough, your body will be begging for exercise once again. But you don’t want to rush in and reinjure yourself, as this could cause you to experience worse damage than before.

To re-enter the gym safely, the most important thing is to take it slowly. Wait until your injury is fully healed and you don’t feel any pain from it. When working out, lower the intensity those first few days. Run a little slower and possibly a shorter distance. Drop the amount of weight you’re lifting and be particularly careful regarding form. Skip the full-court game of hoops and make sure your body can tolerate shooting around first.

As your body responds positively, amp up your workout until you’re back where you were prior to your injury. In essence, you should listen to your body and act accordingly. It may seem simple, but this simple step will give you the best shot at full recovery and make your return to the gym a safe, long-term success.

Why Weights

Strength training is able to slow or reverse the loss of bone density, muscle mass, and strength, three things that were once thought to be inevitable aspects of aging. So don’t fear strength training. Go for it!